Turkey’s Constitutional Court has ruled that a travel ban imposed on human rights activist Nurcan Kaya violated her freedom of expression and right to participate in public discourse.
Kaya was put on trial in October 2020 for a tweet she shared about the operation against Syria and was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence of one year and three months in September 2021.
The tweet for which Kaya was prosecuted and sentenced is as follows: “In Kobane, not only Kurds but all the peoples living there are resisting. Democrat Arabs are also resisting; unfortunately they have lost martyrs.” This statement is a tweet written in quotation marks, i.e. a quote. This quote is the words of a speaker who was video-linked to a public panel on Kobane that Kaya attended in Istanbul in October 2014, while the Resolution Process was ongoing.
As part of the judicial control imposed for 45 days during the trial, Kaya’s passport was confiscated and she was banned from travelling abroad during this period.
The Constitutional Court unanimously ruled on 6 March that the judicial control measure imposed on Kaya was a violation of freedom of expression, an essential pillar of any democratic society.
This ruling sets a crucial precedent for other similar cases involving journalists, lawyers, and politicians who have faced travel restrictions due to their critical stance towards the government.
The decision also comes at a time when concerns about human rights and freedom of expression in Turkey have been raised by international organisations. Critics argue that the government has been increasingly cracking down on dissenting voices, resulting in a shrinking space for civil society and independent media.